Note 4 — Chapter vii · ADVANCED THEORIES

Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), the poet and naturalist, grandfather of Charles Robert Darwin. The book from which the above passage is quoted is Zoonomia, or, The Laws of Organic Life (1794–1796); but the reader will note that the author withdraws these comments in a later essay (cf. The Mason-bees, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. vii.), where he explains that they are due to a misquotation or mistranslation made by Lacordaire, who wrote ‘a Sphex’ where Darwin, as his grandson pointed out to Fabre, had written ‘a Wasp,’ meaning the Common or Social Wasp. It was open to me to suppress this part of the chapter; but, in that case, there would have been so little left of the original and so small an excuse for the title that I might as readily have suppressed the whole chapter, a liberty which I did not feel justified in taking. Besides, the footnote to the aforementioned chapter of The Mason-bees, which precedes the present volume in the English edition, makes sufficient amends for any injury done to the elder Darwin’s reputation here.—Translator’s Note. ↑